After coming upon this blog post on Pinterest, I felt inspired to teach this project myself. Results=AMAZING!

The Kindergarten students really blew me away on this one. This was a project that every single student's artwork turned out great. Like frame and hang on the wall worthy. And although they definitely had to follow step-by-step instructions, there was room for each student's personal touch and unique style to shine through.

To begin this project, students were asked to imagine a lake, an ocean, a river or the beach and say what colors they saw. With the colors that they visualized, they created a flowy watercolor painting. Next students folded black pieces of paper in half and cut out a fish shape. On the fold of the paper, they cut a ‘hill’ and a ‘triangle.’ Next they cut out shapes such as squares and circles to create interesting negative space within the fish body. By gluing the fish onto the watercolor background, a beautiful underwater scene was created.

This Kindergarten project focused on shapes and colors. The students began by tracing a circle to represent the sun. On the outside of the circle, the student did a tissue paper collage with cool colors-purple, blue and green. On the inside, they used warm colors-yellow, red, and orange.After collaging, student used markers to draw a mouth, eyes, and nose to make fun sun face. The students used triangle pieces of paper to create rays for their sun. This project took three 45 minute class periods and they turned out adorable.

After reading the book "Fish Eyes: a book you can count on," the first graders discussed the magnitude of different types of fish and underwater creatures and the different ways to draw them. We began this project with a long, thin piece of white paper. The student each designed and drew one fish, at least as big as their hand. Then, they had to attempt to draw the same fish, with the same shapes and lines, but in different sizes. Each student had to draw at least four fish.After having all of their fish drawn (some drew 4, some drew 10), they traced over their drawings with crayons. After using crayon to add underwater details such as seaweed, clam shells, and bubbles, using watercolor paints, the 1st graders painted in their fish with bright colors. During the next class, they used cool colors to paint the background water.The paintings turned out adorable and in the discussions and creation of the art, we talked about how to draw multiples of the same design, as well as warm and cool colors and appropriate use of supplies.